


Uru

by sheffiesharpe



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, expensive coffee, improbable science, invented mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor cannot look after Jane, no matter how he wants to. Hogun offers a solution. Puente Antiguo receives another unexpected visitor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uru

Volstagg passed him, a whole roast drumstick clamped in his teeth, a baton of bread as long as his forearm in one hand, two brimming steins in his other. He fell into one of the couches, not spilling so much as a drop of mead, and shook his head again. “Eat something. Watching you fast makes me nervous.”

“I am not fasting,” Thor said, more sharply than he intended. He shrugged. “I’m not hungry.” He leaned back, exhaled.

Fandral drummed his fingertips once on his cheek, grinning. “At least not for meat and drink.” He sighed once, mightily, in sharp exaggeration of the noise Thor just made, and he did not bother to look abashed at the glare he received.

Sif drained her own tankard. “There is no sense in you pining. Since you cannot rebuild the Bifrost, and you cannot magic yourself to Earth, leave off _this_.” Her hand was a backhanded wave.

Thor thumped his hand on the table beside him, and none of them mentioned the spidery cracks that ran down the gilded leg. “I am not _pining_. I worry for her, and I am nowhere near to protect her, if my time on Earth should bring her misfortune.” The mounting volume of his voice echoed through the room. Hogun only readjusted his lean against a pillar, and Thor shoved himself to his feet.

“Jane is clever, far more clever, I am certain, than I even know.” He paused, and Fandral nodded, expectantly, his chin propped on his fist, even as Volstagg passed Sif the pitcher. “But she cannot fight with her hands. She had not even the power to keep her belongings _hers_.”

“The son of Coul returned them,” Fandral said. “We all witnessed his word.”

And they had. Thor believed him, Agent Coulson. But that was one man’s promise, and Earth was full of men. He said as much. None of them said anything about Loki’s sending of the Destroyer to Earth. They did not speak of him, not like this, not in private, where the temptation to say too much might be more than one could resist.

Thor sat again, one hand knotted in the hair at his temple. “And Heimdall is sick of the sight of me.” And Thor was sick for the sight of Jane. And if not the _sight_ of her, the knowledge of her, her safety, her happiness.

Volstagg passed him on the way to the banqueting board, clapping his shoulder once as he went.

Fandral brought him mead, a golden apple. “Ways will be found, and you must tend to yourself so that she’s not disappointed when you meet again.” Fandral winked. “Or perhaps she’ll choose another.” He ducked Thor’s half-hearted swing neatly, and he and Volstagg stepped out into the bright air.

Sif stood slowly, shaking her head. “Though I know what he will say, I will speak with my brother.” She bent, looked Thor in the eye. “Likely, Jane Foster does not look at the sky and weep all day.” She swept out, and Hogun’s eyes followed her.

Thor stared into the floor again, then looked up. “I am no fit companion, Hogun. You need not stay.” He tilted his head toward the door, Sif’s still-audible footfalls.

Hogun crossed his arms. “You cannot watch over Jane Foster.”

“Thank you, grim friend, for the reminder.” Thor barely contained another sigh.

Hogun only continued with the same stolid expression. “You cannot, but would you be eased if someone could?”

“The Bifrost is broken.” He had made it so.

“The Aesir need the Bifrost, but the _manulköttr_ do not.”

Thor blinked at him. The _manulköttr_ , the realm-leaping cats, the ones Hogun had spoken of from his own homeland, only once before, and Thor did not remember it well. What he remembered was that he had not heard of them coming to Asgard in ages, and he himself had never seen one. He resolved again to listen more closely when another spoke. He opened his mouth, but closed it again. Listen. Patiently. It was rare enough that Hogun spoke at all. And very deliberately, the story came out.

“The _manulköttr_ have their white crows, too.” Hogun said it almost fondly, and Thor remembered Sif’s mother naming her one: the different child, the one who follows her own path. The breaking of the Bifrost was known to all nine realms now, for surely Jane knew of it, knew something had happened when he had not come back to her. Surely she knew: he would keep his promise as soon as he could. Not for the first time, he wondered if Loki could get him to Earth. Loki was able to bring the Frost Giants to Asgard without the use of the Bifrost.

Hogun’s speech clipped that dangerous thought. One of the cats had come to Asgard, had made itself known to Hogun. Thor wondered if Heimdall knew the cat had come, if his father knew, if there was danger in that. Through Loki’s magic, Frost Giants had entered Asgard undetected. If realm-leaping cats could do the same—

 _The_ manulköttr _are uninterested in the power-struggles of the nine realms._

In the chair where Sif had been sitting, a small cat, the size of those he had seen on Earth, though its ears were round, tufted, lynx-like, and its fur thick and mottled. The cat tilted its head at him, one ear swiveling.

 _Hail, Thor, son of Odin._

The _manulköttr_ ’s voice in his head—and how was its voice in his head?—seemed vaguely amused, nearly bored. For a brief moment, Thor was reminded of Loki, and as soon as the thought formed, the _manulköttr_ ’s ears flattened and its gaze grew fierce.

He apologized. The _manulköttr_ flicked one ear, drew its back straighter. He added, “How, Realm-Leaper, do you know my thoughts?” It was disconcerting.

 _This is how we speak. If you do not wish to speak with me, say as much, and I will go_. The thick, dark tip of its tail twitched.

Beside him, Hogun made no movement, no expression, and Thor wondered if the voice was in Hogun’s head, too.

 _I am holding a different conversation with him. It does not concern you._

Thor startled, and the _manulköttr_ seemed amused again.

“Your name, Realm-Leaper?”

 _Is my own._

“What shall I call you? How shall I call you?”

 _Call me nothing, for I do not come when called._ The ear flicked again.

Thor felt his blood start to heat. Infuriating creature.

 _Yes, but we do not lie, and take comfort in that much._ The _manulköttr_ licked one paw, then flexed its claws in the cushion. _You may know me by the name Jane Foster names me, when she has done so. It is the human custom, and that will serve._

A concession, Thor knew, and the _manulköttr_ seemed to nod without moving so much as a whisker. “You speak of Jane. You would go to her, you would watch over her?” Even if the creature could hear his thoughts, he would speak aloud. “Why should I trust you? And how will you protect her?” He thought its smallness at it directly.

 _Such impatience._

Hogun backed up a step, and Thor wondered if this was another of his poor decisions. Before him, the _manulköttr_ stepped delicately down from the chair, and then it was, in an instant, on its four feet, as tall as his waist. The _manulköttr_ yawned at him, its fangs as long as his fingers, and it stood, put its paws, heavy as stone, on his shoulders.

Thor looked into the green-gold eyes, and he grinned. “So you are not so small. But are you strong enough?”

Hogun backed up another step, picked up his own tankard from the sideboard to hold it carefully, as the _manulköttr_ slapped Thor across the room, its claws sheathed. Thor stood, laughing, and launched himself at the great cat, and together they wrestled, knocking furniture to the side, upsetting the steins that Volstagg had left behind. Thor laughed and the cat growled, and they came to rest again, the _manulköttr_ small again, sitting in the center of his chest. Thor’s lungs heaved at the weight, the creature’s density. And then the _manulköttr_ weighed nothing, though it still sat there.

“I am convinced,” Thor said, and the cat leapt back into the chair as Thor lifted himself, righted a couch. He was pleased. “But I still do not know why you would do this.”

 _Books._ The _manulköttr_ leapt to the back of the chair, its face turned toward the Bifrost Bridge. _Hogun says that Jane Foster is a learned human, and I have been to her desert town. There is a building full of books there. I wish to read them._ The _manulköttr_ sniffed. _I wish to have the peace to do so. My brethren have no patience for reading._

“Jane Foster is more than simply learned.” She had books, more than scientific texts, more than her figures and charts. He’d seen them, inside the curiously small cupboards in her home-that-moved. Books in strange places, tucked under drinking glasses and near her pillow. In the building that housed her work, too—shelves of them. He pictured each place, Jane’s hands or the fringe of her hair in the margins.

The _manulköttr_ seemed quietly pleased, and he wondered if the cat had seen the memory. The cat gave no outward sign, only blinked its blue eyes slowly, contentedly, in a way that he’d seen the cats of Earth do.

 _I go. You will hear from me as I have news._ It bunched itself and sprang, and it disappeared without creating so much as a ripple in the air.

Thor stared into the space for a long while. Hogun left him without saying another word, though as he crossed the courtyard, lighting flashed, far off in the stars.

***

The sky had gone from wide and blue to close and gray, and the power flickered once. Jane looked up from her monitor at the darkening clouds, and she pressed down the flicker of resonating hope. He might be the god of thunder, but a storm could be just a storm, too. And maybe this wouldn’t even be a storm; it could be heat lightning alone. No matter what it was, it would obscure her view of the stars.

“Hey,” Darcy said. “Who invited you?”

When Jane looked up, Darcy was talking to a cat. A cat that was sitting just outside the doors. It was a dusty gold color, its tail curled neatly around its feet. Its eyes were strangely blue, and Jane pushed down the strange tremor in her stomach. There was no shortage of stray cats about town, and though she hadn’t seen this one before, that didn’t mean much. One fat raindrop spattered on the concrete, and the cat shook one paw. The cat turned its face toward her as another drop fell, then another.

She sighed. “Let it in. And open the back door, too. We need a breeze.”

Darcy edged the door open, propped it with one of the chairs, and did the same for the back door. She knelt in front of the cat. “Now you can let yourself out if you need to find yourself a litterbox.”

Lightning crackled and Jane paused. “Power down the computers, Darcy, and keep an eye on the cat, in case…anything.” It would just figure that she’d gotten everything back from S.H.I.E.L.D. to have a stray use the samples she’d brought back from the Bridge site for a toilet.

When she looked at the cat again, it was staring at her. She felt a strange compulsion to apologize, and she might have done it, if the next boom of thunder hadn’t shaken the whole building.

“Jane.” Darcy was sitting on the edge of one table, picking the orange M&Ms out of a bowl. “Can you even _imagine_ what he must be like in the sack?” She crunched the candy, grinned.

Jane turned her back so Darcy wouldn’t see the blush. “It’s just a thunderstorm.” Nevermind that she’d thought the same thing more than once, at every gray ripple in the sky, in the still blackness of night. She tried not to think about what might happen if he didn’t come back, if she couldn’t find him again. It had been nearly a month. No word, no sound, no whisper of him. She refilled the coffee maker so that Darcy wouldn’t see the expression on her face. She didn’t turn back until her mug was refilled, and she turned her eyes toward the cat.

The cat glared at the sky, then settled itself not far from the door, beside an atlas Jane had been using. She’d left it open to the page showing Puente Antiguo, and the cat crouched with one paw on the pages.

Jane reached down, offered her hand to the cat. The cat looked at it indifferently, turned its face back to the map. “Okay, then,” Jane said. “Educate yourself on some topography.”

The cat folded both front paws under its chest, and Jane went back to her desk. She opened her notebook, lingering for a moment only on the page Thor had drawn the World’s Tree over her own gathering of galaxies. If she only stared at the lines he’d made, she’d never figure out the bridge.

The storm and the afternoon passed. The strange gold cat let itself out when the weather cleared.

***

When Jane opened the door the next morning, she nearly tripped over another book lying in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t the atlas from the day before; it was a book on Anasazi history and the Manitou Cliff Dwellings that Erik had gotten from the library. Erik’s borrowed book made her think of Erik’s friend, whether he was having any luck getting information from the man in New York, from Dr. Pym. She almost hoped not. She didn’t think she wanted to share any of this with a stranger, with someone new, with someone who hadn’t seen— She looked at the book again. “Darcy,” she muttered, and when she bent to pick it up, trying not to think about what the late fees on it would be, she startled. The cat was sitting on the floor again, and it looked from the book to Jane and back again. She let the book where it was, open to the second chapter.

“Darcy!” she called. “Did you let the cat in again?”

Darcy was an ungainly thump from the couch in the back. She shuffled out to meet Jane, her hair still pillow-tangled under her knit hat. “What?” She yawned.

“Cat?” Jane pointed.

“Yep, that’s a cat. Hey, buddy.” Darcy knelt beside the cat and attempted to stroke its ears, but the cat kept evading her touch without moving from its spot. She stood and flicked the coffee pot switch. “Totally a cat,” she muttered.

Jane found herself strangely amused by the cat’s disinterest. Her lamps lit easily, and the day’s clear sky—enduring—promised a clear view of the stars. She didn’t notice until it was nearly dark that the cat had moved to perch on the shelf behind her head, that it seemed to be watching her calculations. It was strangely flattering.

Late that night, late enough that it was tending again until morning, she fell asleep on the lounge chair on the roof, the cat curled on the other chair. She dreamed about him, them, together, doing nothing: making coffee, sorting the recycling (him crushing Darcy’s empty Diet Coke cans flat between his palms), watching the stars.

***

The cat had pawed open her notebook. Jane nearly screeched, nearly yanked it out from under the cat’s body, but the pages were open to her most recent set of notes, to the atmospheric pressure fluctuations the night Thor had come to Earth and the equation that she’d found that linked those with the strange compressions at the entry-site. The cat blinked its blue eyes at her.

“You’re right,” Jane said. “I don’t think that has anything to do with it.” She reached for the notebook, and the cat inched back, though it hooked one claw in the ribbon bookmark, shook its paw sharply, trying to get free. “Wait, wait, hold—” The journal fell open to another page, an earlier one, where she’d given up on physics and turned to art for the briefest of moments. Fractal-patterned cyclonics spiraled up, and it was the most colorful thing in the notebook—she’d gone a little overboard with colored pencils. She looked at it for a long moment. “At least it’s pretty,” she said to the cat.

 _Rainbow bridge_.

The words came into her head all at once. That’s what Thor had called it, in the van, when she was still forty-nine percent sure that he was delusional. She looked at the cat, and the cat looked back at her. Jane bolted for her computer.

***

At nine-thirty, Darcy brought her a sandwich and a glass of orange juice and a sweater. “Do you even know how cold it is in here?”

“My hard drive likes it.” She kept typing, one-handed, held out the glass of juice until Darcy found a straw and put it in the glass. Jane sipped, not taking her eyes off the screen for a moment. She adjusted one, then four sets of figures, took a deep breath, and set the calculations in motion. It would be hours until the complete visualization could be simulated. S.H.I.E.L.D., she thought, should buy her a system upgrade.

She stood and stretched, her neck and spine popping. The thought of Thor’s dense hand kneading the stiff muscle caught her breath in her throat.

“So, you gonna name it?” Darcy passed her an apple when she’d finished the sandwich.

“I don’t even know if the theory works. Or sort of works. Or if I spent all day telling the computer to draw me a pretty picture. No, Darcy, I’m not going to name it.” Jane flopped into a beanbag chair, something she’d brought for occasions like today, when she wanted to lie half-upside down until her spine decompressed.

“I meant the cat.” Darcy ate an M&M. She was working on the red ones. In two days, there’d only be green and blue left, and then Jane would strike.

Jane lifted her head. “Oh.” The cat was looking at her from the warm spot she’d left on her desk chair, its paws folded under its chest. “It’s not—”

“It’s not leaving is what it’s not.”

Jane looked at Darcy, and then back to the cat. “Can I have a cat?” Jane wasn’t sure who she was asking. She’d never considered it before. She’d thought abstractly about a pet of some sort before, but that was all. She didn’t have time to take animals for walks. But in three days, this cat hadn’t asked anything of her. It had only been a kind of pleasant company, a friend in a way she couldn’t quite name.

Darcy shrugged. “Those guys in the suits will probably take it as evidence, too, if they come back. But it’s kind of cool.” Darcy flipped through something on her iPod. “Hasn’t peed on anything. Hasn’t broken anything. So the cat’s one up on your god of thunder, and I think you were all for keeping him.”

“That chair was a little broken to start with.” Its wooden legs had simply collapsed under him. She wasn’t sure how. She and Donald had both sat on that chair before, together, and Thor was big, but he wasn’t _that_ big. It was as though physics didn’t apply to him, mostly, as though gravity worked differently on him. Which might be true. Somehow.

“Name. Cat. Focus.” Darcy pressed a mug of coffee into her hands.

Jane emptied most of the cup in one go, and she pictured the white ceramic shattering at the diner. “Mm.” She looked at the cat again. There was a word, on the tip of her tongue, something Thor had said, something about Mjölnir— “Uru.”

Darcy looked like she was about to sulk. “You were supposed to say, ‘Mew-Mew.’”

Both Jane and the cat glared at her. “Does that cat _look_ like a ‘mew-mew’?”

“Could.”

“No.”

The cat leapt down from Jane’s chair and came to sit beside the beanbag. Beside her, it looked more gray than it had before, nearly gunmetal. _Like the hammer._ Jane rubbed her palms against her closed eyelids. There was probably a lightbulb somewhere she needed to replace. When she opened her eyes again, the cat was dipping one paw into what was left of her coffee, licking the droplets off. There wasn’t even milk in it.

“You shouldn’t do that.” Jane reached, tried to pick up the cat, and for a moment, she _couldn’t_. And then the cat was in her lap, though it gave her a look and sat stoically at the end of her knees, turning its gaze back to her cup. The cat’s ears were strangely rounded. What kind of cat had ears like that?

“Totally shouldn’t.” Darcy held out her phone, the page displayed a clear list of “What not to give your cat.”

Was this now her cat? The cat—Uru—turned its blue eyes to her and blinked. The weight of the cat on her knees increased, slowly, steadily, until she had to flatten her knees, and still it pressed downward. A twelve-inch-tall cat did not weigh sixty pounds. She looked at the cat, and its coat seemed to shift between gold and gray, wave-like.

“You’re not—” She liked to think that if this was Thor, somehow, as a cat, he’d at least let her pet him.

 _No._

No, that was ridiculous. Thor wouldn’t come to her as a cat, because if he could come to her as a cat, he’d find a way to do it as a man, and even if he did, he’d be affectionate. She pictured herself running her palm down his back, running her fingertip over his ears, along the bearded line of his jaw.

The cat leapt down from her legs and padded back to her coffee cup.

“Jane!” Darcy pointed again.

Jane put her head back, stared at the ceiling. “I think Uru will be fine.” Uru would be fine drinking her coffee, and the computer would be fine generating her model, and everything would be fine.

***

The door of the caravan rattled Jane awake. “Darcy.” Jane called out to the young woman, her voice buried by her pillow. “Go away. Don’t care how cute he was.” She rolled over, covered her ears with her quilt. The rattling continued, and this time, it was accompanied by an insistent meow.

She groaned. “Cat.” She remembered, for an instant, the anger and confusion in Thor’s voice when they first found him. _Hammer,_ half-question, half-demand. She peeled herself out of bed, wincing. She thought she was used to being hunched over her desk, but the last week had redefined what she’d meant by “work all day.” She was exhausted, but it felt like she was actually getting somewhere. There was no great flash of brilliance, no leap, but nearly every day, it seemed, gave her one more small step to take. At two in the morning, though, each actual step felt like miles. She opened the door, and Uru stepped neatly up into the caravan, leapt onto her bed, and settled beside her pillow.

“Fleas.” The word came out in a sleepy whine. She hadn’t taken Uru to the vet yet, so who knows what the cat had. The nearest one was up near Santa Fe. She was too tired to try moving the cat, though.

 _I do not have fleas._

“Better not,” she mumbled into the pillow. In the morning, she woke to Uru kneading the back of her neck. Somehow, there was no prick of claws, and after the pain she’d had last night, it was relaxing, rather than annoying. It was easy to fall asleep again like that, imagining Thor’s fingertips there. Somewhere in the space between being awake and being asleep, she could have sworn she’d heard a _hmph_.

***

From time to time, Uru disappeared. Jane never saw the cat leave, and she never saw a return. The cat was absent, then all at once, Uru was simply sitting behind her, on the shelf that had become Uru’s, cushioned with one of Jane’s sweatshirts. Or Uru was on the table, crouched in front of whatever she was working on, or sprawled in front of one of the bookcases, the volumes he’d knocked down spread open around him.

“It looks like it’s reading.” Darcy put a saucer of coffee down. “That’s weird, cat.”

Uru only dipped one paw into the dark liquid and licked it clean. And flattened its ears.

“Sorry, bud. We’re out of the Kenyan that that guy sent sent. Folgers for everyone today.”

Jane accepted her cup, tried not to sigh. The Kenyan coffee, the two pounds of beans that had shown up with a signed card that said, “From one scientist irritated by S.H.I.E.L.D. to another,” was, she thought, responsible for most of the progress she’d made in the last two weeks. He must be some friend of Erik’s. She didn’t really care. The coffee was amazing.

All three of them glared a little at the uninspired brew, and Uru hooked one page of the open copy of _Moby Dick_ with one claw, flicked it away to a new page. The way it hadn’t moved from the book all morning made Jane think she should try reading it again.

Darcy glanced at Jane. “That cat is definitely reading.”

“So?” Jane had decided, last week, that whatever Uru did was normal for Uru. And she wasn’t going to tell Darcy about the dry, quiet voice she sometimes heard when she was drifting off to sleep. She’d kissed the god of thunder. The actual one. She hadn’t even thought she believed in deities. Any of them. So whatever Uru wanted to do—just business as usual. Just like fighting metal giants and frost giants—was Thor fighting some other kind of giant right now? A fierce tug of worry caught her stomach.

 _Thor is fine_. Uru turned another page.

Jane startled, almost spilled her coffee. _Thank you_. She wasn’t thinking it _at_ Uru. Just thinking it.

“What?” Darcy swung her legs. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Jane resumed drinking her coffee, slid her chair back behind her desk, and tossed her keys at Darcy’s knees. “Coffee run. I don’t care how far you have to go. Find something good.” The screen showed her “rainbow bridge.” The answer was there. Somewhere. “And Pop-Tarts. Cinnamon. With frosting.”

Darcy forgot about whatever she found strange about Uru. She, as she always did when she was headed for the city, sang Christian Bale’s solo from _Newsies_ all the way out the door. She skipped to “Where does it say you got to live and die here?” on her last look at Jane. Jane rolled her eyes and was grateful that Darcy would probably be gone all day, using the excuse of a grocery run to shop and get a pedicure.

Which meant Jane could get a little more work done.

After noon, she set the computer to another modeling task, and she decided to take the luxury of a long shower, at least as long as the aged hot water heater could give her. She was washing her hair when she realized that Uru was sitting there, on the edge of the bath, just shy of the spray. The cat hadn’t followed her into the bathroom, and the door was still quite closed. She wasn’t half as unnerved by that as she thought she should be.

The first thing she did was flatten her palm, divert a bit of water so that it splashed the neat gray paws.

 _The water is welcome._

Jane had a sudden image of Uru swimming in a wide stream. She inched back a little, offered the bath. Uru leapt down, flopped onto one gray side in a strangely ungainly motion, letting the water sluicing Jane lap around.

 _You are both clever and kind. Just as he said._ Uru tipped its head back, bared the thick fur of its ruff to the spray.

“He.” Jane swallowed. “You did come from—”

 _The mountains beyond Asgard. Near the borders of Nidavellir._ Tall, snow-capped mountains, cut by broad swathes of tundra.

 _Beautiful_ , Jane thought, and Uru seemed pleased. And Uru had spoken with Thor.

 _He speaks much of you. To distraction._ The three warriors and the fierce woman. Shades of annoyance. Humor. Pleasant surprise.

Jane felt herself blush.

 _You think of him as often. It gives him much joy to know it._

“You told him?” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

 _Because there is not yet a way for him to come to you, to know how you fare, I offered that much._

 _In exchange for the books._

Uru seemed to nod.

 _If there’s anything you want, tell me. I have a lot of friends in a lot of libraries, all over._ The water was going quickly from lukewarm to tepid to chilling. _Mostly science, of course, but librarians are good at finding many kinds of books._

Uru rolled onto its back, wiggling full under the spray while Jane stepped out, toweled herself dry. She stood in front of the sink, the towel under her feet because cold feet were worse than the cool air on the rest of her, combing her wet hair with her fingers. She missed him. He’d showered here. She’d missed chances she hadn’t known she’d wanted to take, then. If she could just see him again. There wasn’t even a photograph of him.

 _I will show you._ Uru, slick as pewter, sat on the bath’s edge. The cat leapt, and Jane reached to catch it, but Uru disappeared into the air without so much as a ripple.

***

Thor sat in the thick heat of the lodge, some of the tension leeching out through the sweet-smelling cedar. Volstagg made a dense, content sound, taking up a whole bench by himself, and even Fandral was quiet. Hogun did not care for the sauna, and he and Sif had gone elsewhere, to swim, perhaps. He closed his eyes, put his head back, and the sudden feeling of someone else in the room jerked him out of a near-doze. Uru—lovely Jane, to call the cat so—sat at his feet.

“Jane. Is she well?” Saying the words left him breathless.

Uru waited a moment before responding. _I would not be here if she were not._

He raked a hand through his hair. “Do not bait me when I have concern for her.”

Uru twitched the tip of its tail, clearly amused.

 _She wished to see you. I came to see you for her, and then I must return. I wish to understand the whiteness of the whale._

“Whale?” Jane Foster lived in a great desert. There were no whales. He searched his memory for any mention Jane had made of whales, of seas—his thoughts were interrupted by the image of Jane, her long, dark hair shining wet over one shoulder, the delicate leanness of her body, the small curves of her breasts. It was too vivid, too clearly placed: the dull blue and white of the bathing chamber, her discarded clothes in a pile by the door. He closed his eyes, and the image remained: Jane inspecting her left thumb, where she had nipped away a hangnail; Jane smoothing a knot in her hair. He nearly reached.

Uru yawned, unmoved by the thought, the sight that staggered Thor, that unraveled something deep in him. He swallowed hard. “You ought not have shown me Jane unclothed.” He couldn’t imagine that she knew he might see that much, and something nearly like shame coiled low in his stomach. Nearly, but such longing, too—longing like he had never known.

Uru regarded him with immaculate boredom. _She wished that you might see each other. You have seen, now might she. And I my book._ And the cat was gone.

Thor exhaled.

Beside him, Volstagg cracked one eye open, glanced down at him, and closed his eye again. Said, “Well. At least it’s fair.”

Fandral stretched, coming to rest with his legs spread. “I say more than fair on her part, if the cat had an eye for a proper look. What would be far _more_ fair would be to know exactly what has turned your cheeks as red as a maid’s.” He arched one eyebrow. “Details.”

Fandral’s voice crackled at the edges of the sight of Jane, and there seemed to be no way to see Jane and hear anything else. Thor stood, and he was not certain if he said he was taking his leave. He found himself in an empty hallway, the cool air prickling his skin. Jane. His Jane. He could barely catch his breath.

***

Jane stooped to pick up the mail—a few fliers for “postal patron,” a catalog that could only belong to Darcy, a package. The utilities bill had stopped coming altogether, and Jane wasn’t going to argue. Agent Coulson’s doing, most likely. She opened the box, and there was another two pounds of coffee, though this one was labeled as a Nicaraguan blend. There was a card inside, dashed with sharply slanted black letters.

 _I like the Kenyan, and I know you like the Kenyan, but try this one. Pepper likes it better, and, by all accounts, she has better taste than I do. –Tony Stark_

Jane blinked at the card for a while. She didn’t know who Pepper was, but _Tony Stark_. She stared at the card a little longer, then pushed it out of her mind. She wasn’t going to think about the billionaire playboy who’d also managed to make the most important advancements in energy technology in the last—forever—and that he’d sent her coffee. Coffee that probably cost more per pound than what she spent on coffee in a year. It didn’t matter. Good coffee was good. She carried the beans to the kitchenette, poured some in the grinder. When the machine stopped whirring, she turned to the sink, found Uru sitting on the countertop, _Moby Dick_ in front of it again. She wasn’t going to ask how the book had gotten here.

Uru’s mouth was slightly open, as though rolling the rich coffee scent over its pink tongue. A sound surprisingly like a purr rose from the gray chest.

“I know, right?” She grinned, stole a mug and a saucer full as the carafe filled. They drank for a moment, Uru careful not to drip anything on counter or book, and Jane gathered her arms over her chest, feeling the warmth and full richness of the coffee in her mouth. This one was better, smoother, bolder, a touch less acidic and nearly chocolatey in its finish. _Thor would love this_ , she thought. He’d taken a strange liking to the burnt-tasting hazelnut coffee at the gas station. This was that ghost of a flavor, done _right_.

Uru licked a paw clean, turned another page. _Yes._ And in something that felt like an afterthought: _He was glad of news of you._ Jane glanced over the cat’s shoulder, saw Ishmael’s assessment of the whales’ spout. His mix of attempted science and religion, observation and philosophy, even this glance, felt strangely at home. She leaned in to read a few more sentences, stopped.

Suddenly, in her mind, the whole golden expanse of Thor, sheened with sweat, his head tipped back, his eyes closed. All of him displayed, bare, burnished. She dropped her mug. The ceramic shattered, stray drops of coffee speckling the floor beside the green shards.

Uru flicked one ear, annoyance radiating, and a breath huffed from its chest. Another page’s dry rattle.

Jane knelt, gathered up the largest pieces, scraped together the rest with a handful of paper towels. She could not, no matter how she tried, remember where the dustpan was.

**Author's Note:**

> ote: The word I used for Uru's species, manulköttr, is a combination of the Old Norse word for cat (köttr) and one of the words for a Pallas's Cat (manul). When Uru is not otherwise manipulating its appearance, Uru looks like one of those. Just significantly larger. Uru is, also, ungendered, and hopefully forgives me for the fact that English doesn't give me a useful gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun.


End file.
